THE CONSERVATION VALUE OF SMALL RESERVES & HABITAT FRAGMENTS

Abstract

Protected areas serve as our primary tool to stem the tide of global biodiversity loss. As

the number of protected areas has grown to combat the effects of land-use change and

habitat fragmentation, the size of these new protected areas has, at the same time,

decreased. Though over half of all current protected areas measure under 100 hectares in

size, their study is not well-represented in the scientific literature, partly because many of

them are relatively new and also because they have not historically been considered to

have the same value as larger reserves. Increasingly, the limited knowledge we do have

about the functions that these small reserves provide indicate that they may in fact be

important to conservation efforts in multiple ways. My thesis focuses on these smaller

components of the global protected area network and comparably sized, less formal area-based conservation land holdings (which I refer to collectively as reserves), their

biodiversity, and what mediates the species communities found within them. I model the

landscapes in which small reserves best provide habitat for biodiversity and supply

ecosystem services, contributing to our understanding of how to acquire and manage

small reserves. I find that small reserves can provide habitat for rare, economically

valuable species and provide valuable recreational opportunities for human visitors as

well. Altogether my dissertation research emphasizes that, with increasing competition

from human land uses, effective biodiversity conservation must, by necessity, employ

small reserves in addition to their larger counterparts.